Human
slavery is as old as human history, of which its story forms one of
the most somber chapters. It no doubt originated in the custom of enslaving
prisoners captured in war. Among the ancient oriental nations, even the
Jews, had their bondservants, which is but another name for slaves. With the
introduction of Christianity the condition of the slaves was improved, and
about the time of Justinian jurists began to regard
slavery as contrary to
the laws of nature -- justifiable only as a punishment for debt or crime, a
sort of modification of the old theory that the victor possessed the right
to slay the vanquished. But so long as the toil of the bondsman allowed his
owner to live in comparative ease, or there was a profit to the trader in
human beings, it was a difficult matter to present the moral aspects of the
slavery question, and the traffic went on.

African-American
slavery was one result of the discovery of America. In the
early settlements some attempts were made to enslave the
Indians,
but this proved impossible and the the would-be slave-owner was compelled to
turn his attention in some other direction.

Prior to the discovery of America by
Christopher Columbus, the Portuguese had explored the western coast of Africa, where they
found that the African tribes were accustomed to enslaving or selling the
captives taken in war. The failure to make slaves of the
Native
Americans
led
the early planters and mine owners to adopt the alternative of buying slaves of
the African chieftains.

As early as 1517 Charles V, then King of Spain, gave royal permission to the
Spanish settlements in America to import African-Americans from the Portuguese
establishments on the coasts of Guinea, and in 1565 Pedro Menendez, the founder
of St. Augustine, Florida was authorized by Philip II to import 500 black slaves. The
first black slaves in the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, were brought
there by a Dutch trader in 1620, and a few years later, black slaves were
introduced in the English colony at Charleston, South Carolina. When Antoine Crozat, in 1712, was granted a monopoly of the Louisiana trade by the French
government, he was also given authority, if he found it necessary to employ
slave labor, "to send a ship every year to trade for African-Americans directly
upon the coast of Guinea, taking permission of the Guinea Company to do so." The
slaves thus imported were to be sold to the inhabitants of Louisiana, and all
other companies were forbidden to bring slaves into the colony. Five years
later, Crozat was succeeded by the Western Company, which agreed to bring into
Louisiana, during the 25 years of its franchise, not less than 3,000 black
slaves. After this company gave up its charter in 1732, the French government
resumed control of Louisiana and continued to supply African-Americans to the
colonists. Late in the 17th century, England obtained from Spain the right to
enter the slave trade, but instead of exercising the right as a government, the
privilege was turned over to a company of which Sir John Hawkins was the head,
and by 1700 this company had taken some 300,000 people from the African coast to
the English colonies. In 1780, about a century after the right was obtained from
Spain, the English slave-ships had carried to the island of Jamaica alone over
half a million slaves. Thus it will be seen that each of the three great
European nations that claimed territory and formed settlements in America
countenanced the institution of
slavery.

As a result of the activity of these nations in fostering and promoting the
slave trade,
slavery existed in all the American colonies at the beginning of
the
Revolutionary War. Vermont was the first to abolish it. That colony, in
1777, adopted a constitution, the first article of which prohibited
slavery.
Toward the close of the
American Revolution
an agitation was started in both Europe and
America for the suppression of the slave traffic. One result of this agitation
was that the North Atlantic colonies took steps to abolish and prohibit
slavery
within their boundaries.

Massachusetts led off in 1780; the same year
Pennsylvania passed a law that all slaves born after March 1, 1780, should be
free at the age of 28 years; New Hampshire followed in 1783, and the next year
Rhode Island and Connecticut each adopted a system of gradual emancipation.
Another effect of the agitation was that the convention which framed the Federal
Constitution in 1789 incorporated in that instrument the provision that "The
migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall
think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year
1808, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten
dollars for each person."

Almost immediately after the adoption of the
Constitution, the remaining
northern colonies began to make provisions for the
abolition of
slavery. New York began
a system of gradual freeing of the slaves in 1799 and ended
slavery entirely in
1827. New Jersey adopted the same plan in 1804, but there were about 200 slaves
in that state as late as 1850. The question now became a sectional one.

George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and other prominent men in the early days of the republic
were opposed to
slavery on moral grounds, but the South found slave labor
profitable, and it became more profitable after the invention of the cotton-gin
by Eli Whitney in 1793. By the treaty with England in 1783 the western limit of
the United States was extended to the Mississippi River. The original draft of
the ordinance of 1784 provided for the division of all the territory thus
acquired, north of 31° north latitude, into states, in which
slavery was to be
prohibited after the year 1800. The ordinance of 1787, which provided for the
government of the territory northwest of the Ohio River, prohibited
slavery in
that region, but when the provisions of the ordinance were later extended to the
southwest, the clause prohibiting
slavery was omitted.